21st Post "THE PAST IS MYSELF"

1st Photo: Edgewood Cemetery on a hill overlooking the Yellow Creek Valley
2nd Photo: Entrance to Edgewood Cemetery

3rd Photo: Looking down into the Yellow Creek Valley from Edgewood Cemetery

4th Photo: Crippled Grandmother and Grandfather's Tombstone

5th Photo: John May's Grave, Veteran of the War of 1812 (Great Great Grandfather)

6th Photo: Grave of the Spinster School Teacher Aunt who married the Bread Man

7th Photo: Harry Truman Adams whose death spoiled Christmas for future generations

8th Photo: Foster Bell Adams who died from complications of excessive alcohol

9th Photo: Horace David Adams a real looser in the world of men and animal abuser

10th Photo: My Parent's grave, they never knew how to raise an offspring, what a pity

GRAVE DIGGIN’

The Yellow Creek Valley was host to numerous gravesites, graveyards, plots and cemeteries. Everything and everybody was interred in these “so called” hallowed grounds.

My earliest recollection of graveyards were “graveyard cleanings” Word spread throughout the valley concerning a get together on a certain date to clean the graveyard. Mule drawn wagons would arrive with men and womenfolk armed with all sorts of implements of destruction. There were rakes, grubbing hoes, goose neck hoes, “lively lads”, (the predecessor of the modern day “powered weed eater”), pitch forks, crosscut saws, shovels and any other tool to assist in clearing out the overgrowth on the graves.

Always, towards the end of the grounds cleaning, someone would say, “Think we ought to go over and work in the (N) “politically correct” section? And a few of the folks would go and try to clear the abundance of overgrowth in the area where slaves had been buried. A lot of the graves were sunken and there were no headstones to identify who had been buried there. The old wooden markers had rotted away and none of the offspring and later generations ever came to do any work on those forgotten graves.

I use to think a lot about the folk who were buried in the area where people of color had been interred. I would sit beside a sunken grave and think about who the person might be who was placed there. What they were like, what were their hopes, dreams, desires; were they mistreated, were they hungry, were they cold in the winter, did they know anyone of their family’s ancestry, were they separated from their family, all of these thoughts would pass through my mind.

Of particular notice to me was my family receiving word that someone of acquaintance had “passed”. Old Aunt Annie, who with her husband Uncle Walter Thompson, ran the general store on the opposite side of Hunt Branch from old man Ponto Smith, was always the first to give notice to any happenings in and around the Yellow Creek Valley.

Don’t know how or where Annie Thompson could always get the “word” first, but you could rest assured that when Annie Thompson got wind of something happening, the “word” spread throughout the Yellow Creek Valley, Nubbin Ridge, Wilson Hollow, Dry Hollow, Tick Grove, Maple Grove, Balthrop Branch and the May Hill within hours of the event’s happening. We had high speed communications before we had telephones in the valley.

Once word got out concerning a death, all the men in the neighborhood would gather at the cemetery to dig the grave, and you can bet your bottom dollar, I was right in the midst of it all

Back in the early 1940s nobody in the valley ever heard of hydraulic or mechanical means to dig graves. The digging process was pick, shovel and back breaking labor. I would stand around and watch the men toil, sweat, curse and take a swig of some foul smelling stuff from a jug. There were also wooden water kegs sitting in the shade of a tree, but the men gravitated to the crock jug. I was never allowed to sip from the jug and being too young to get into the ground breaking procedure, I just stood around and excitedly observed what was happening.

One particular grave digging which I will never forget took place back in 1947 when I was nine years of age.

I was never close to any of my patriarchal family, basically because they would not have anything to do with me. I never could understand why, but I am certain their actions or inactions toward me were because I was born in Chicago and living with the Adams Family, of which the McClurkan Clan had little to no fondness. Also I don’t think my mother marrying my father was taken with much graciousness by my father’s mother.

The only thing I remember about my grandmother, Beulah Street McClurkan, was her constantly sitting in a wheel chair. What few times I had been in her presence, a scowl was always on her face and a bitterness that eschewed from her aura. I don’t think she liked me very much, but I outlived her and saw her buried.

Back in my childhood when people died, they were kept in the house, and people, mostly womenfolk would sit up all night with the corpse. I understand the reason for sitting up with the dead was to keep the cats from eating the body. (At least that is what I was told)
I remember going into the room where my grandmother Beulah lay in a coffin supported by two saw horses, and I remember as if it was yesterday, the awful smell and observing a liquid of thick viscosity dripping constantly on the floor under the coffin. All the womenfolk sitting around the coffin were holding little perfumed sachets to their noses. Hell, she was rotting before she was put into the grave. Nobody in the McClurkan Family ever thought to have her embalmed. I’ll remember that smell for as long as I live. But cursed be me, should I ever mention the event because the denial in my family ran deep and I would be told to “shut up” in no uncertain terms.

As her coffin was lowered into the pine box that had been placed in the grave, folk attending the burial had to turn away because of the stench.

Now let’s fast forward to another grave digging I attended the following year. My father’s twin brother’s wife died. Her grave was located downhill from my grandmother Beulah’s grave. Seepage in the ground was prominent and the smell made the diggers sick. A man would go down and pick and shovel for a few minutes and then come out of the grave and go over by the big Cedar Tree and vomit up his insides.

There was very little swigging from the crock jug that day.

In the next Post, I'll show you photographs and we will speak of the patriarchal side of my parentage.